> So my point is not “python is hard because of mutability”... ok > ...it’s that pythons mutability really gets in the way of the beginner and causes lots of

> So my point is not “python is hard because of mutability”... ok > ...it’s that pythons mutability really gets in the way of the beginner and causes lots of gotchas for even well experienced developers So python is hard because of mutability? (well, harder anyway). The fact is, if python had immutability it'd be semantically simpler. Unquestionably (I'd claim). But that comes at a performance cost, so mutability is allowed. That's when we get these confusions of what an operation does (because the semantics get non-simple). My point is either way we pay a price. Anyway I have a feeling I may be misconstruing your point, sorry if that's so.